A Blind Man… wasn’t as good as Come To Me, but the very last story in this book, “The Story,” was cool. At some point during the telling, the role of narrator seems to dissolve away, and the voice of the “real author” takes over… it’s a strange and cool effect.

“The Story” is about a recent widow and a couple with a child who lives next door. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the end:

Sandra, as I’ve named her, was actually a therapist but not a psychiatrist, and I disliked her so much I can’t bear to make you think, even in this story, that she had the discipline and drive and intellectual persistence to become a physician. She had nothing but appetite and brass balls, and she was the worst mother I ever saw.

I wished her harm and acted on that wish, without regret. Even now I regard her destruction as a very good thing, and that undermines the necessary fictive texture of deep ambiguity, the roiling ambivalence that might give tension to the narrator’s affection. Sandra pinched Miranda for not falling asleep quickly enough, and she gave her potato chips for breakfast and Slurpees for lunch, she cut her daughter’s hair with pinking shears and spent two hundred dollars she didn’t have on her own monthly Madison Avenue cuts. She left that child in more stores than I can remember, cut cocaine on her changing table, and blamed the poor little thing for every disappointment and heartache in her own life, until Miranda’s eyes welled up just at the sound of her mother calling her name. And if Sandra was not evil, she was worse than foolish, and sick, and more to the point, incurable. If Sandra was smooshed inside a wrecked car, splattered against the inside of a tunnel, I wouldn’t feel even so sad for her as I did for Princess Diana, for whom I felt very little indeed.

And here are some excerpts from the middle of the end:

The story I began to write would have skewered her, of course. Anyone who knew her would have read it and known it was she and thought badly of her while reading. She would have been embarrassed and angry. That really is not what I have in mind. I want her skin like a rug on my floor, warm throat slit, heart still beating behind the newly bricked-up wall. [...]

I can’t say I didn’t intend harm. I intended not only harm but death, or if not her death, which I think is a little beyond my psychological reach, then her disappearance, which is less satisfying because it’s not permanent but better because there is no body.

And here is the end:

I have made the best and happiest ending that I can in this world, made it out of the flax and netting and leftover trim of someone else’s life, I know, but made it to keep the innocent safe and the guilty punished, and I have made it as the world should be and not as I have found it.

Untitled, Yelapa, Jalisco, 2006

“Suppose you tell me when you first began to hate the telephone.”

…”Uncle of mine called it the Ghost Machine. Voices without bodies. Scared the living hell out of me. Later in life I was never comfortable. Seemed to me a phone was an impersonal instrument. If it felt like it, it let your personality go through its wires. If it didn’t want to, it just drained your personality away until what slipped through at the other end was some cold fish of a voice all steel, copper, plastic, no warmth, no reality. It’s easy to say the wrong thing on telephones; the telephone changes your meaning on you. First thing you know, you’ve made an enemy. Then, of course, the telephone’s such a convenient thing; it just sits there and demands you call someone who doesn’t want to be called. Friends were always calling, calling, calling me. Hell, I hadn’t any time of my own. …my horror chamber of a radio wrist watch on which my friends and wife phoned every five minutes. What is there about such ‘conveniences’ that makes them so temptingly convenient? The average man thinks, Here I am, time on my hands, so why not just buzz old Joe up, eh? ‘Hello, hello!’ I love my friends, my wife, humanity, very much, but when one minute my wife calls to say, ‘Where are you now dear?’ and a friend calls and says, ‘Got the best off-color joke to tell you. Seems there was a guy—’ And a stranger calls and cries out, ‘This is the Find-Fax Poll. What gum are you chewing at this very instant!’ Well!”

I don’t imagine I’m the first person to read this story in the last few years and laugh her ass off, thinking of twitter, facebook, myspace, dodgeball… and well, what started off with the car phone, I guess. (Or the fully portable mobile phone, the “radio wrist watch”!)

“It’s easy to say the wrong thing on telephones; the telephone changes your meaning on you. First thing you know, you’ve made an enemy.” IRC, anyone? O prescient sci-fi writers!

So then I was like, “Oh, Mitch Albom must be a cool guy and good writer– I see the library has another book of his called “For One More Day”– perhaps that also is a good book.” IT WASN’T. IT SUCKED.

It sucked so bad that I don’t even want to waste time looking up the particularly bad parts to share. I just want explain that I went from the glow of reading a touching and personally meaningful account of terminal illness to the cheesy fake-nostalgic retching I associate with the “Chicken Soup…” book series. I wanted to thwack Mitch Albom across the head. Why, Mitch? Why did you have to write it? I thought you were all awesome and stuff until I read your latest book.

It was while reading this book that I noticed a stylistic thing that some authors do which really irritates me. It’s when a writer is going along describing something and his character ends up at the gas station and the Asian guy hands him his change at the counter or the Mexican guy does something or other and I’m thinking… is that the defining characteristic of this person? He’s Asian? What is that even supposed to mean here? Could we at least get some real imagery? His mannerisms? They languorous way in which he pushed that beer across the counter towards you? All we get is his nationality, which is actually a guess based on physical appearance? That’s crap imagery and crap writing, and I know that even though I’m not a writer.

P.S. I would recommend “Tuesdays With Morrie” to anyone though, even though I no longer think Mitch Albom is totally awesome.

Additionally, I just finished reading Dancing at the River’s Edge, co-written by a patient (with a serious autoimmune disease) and one of her doctors, and it just pretty much kicked my ass halfway to hell. That book has things in it that I would never want Richard to know about what I go through with lupus… I would not ask my friends to read that book. I might ask my family, if I thought my mother or father would give two shits. Even though it’s depressing, it’s still full of amazing information, and I highly recommend it to anyone in a caring profession who works with chronically ill patients. I will probably buy it for my family doctor.

Although the book was a downer, it was affirming at the same time. Having the most soul-chilling aspects of living with chronic illness articulated in a very astute manner makes them more real. I think I spend a lot of time trying to make them less real, because it is very very lonely. I will go back to the book when I am feeling less raw, and pull out some good quotes to share. It’s full of solid content goodness. I actually kind of can’t believe it was even written– I didn’t think people talked so candidly about such things. Don’t people turn away from pain, death, and disease whenever they can? Even doctors do.

I’ve read three of his other novels– “American Psycho”, “Glamorama”, and “Lunar Park”. I did not like “Lunar Park” so much, but “American Psycho” and “Glamorama” were very good. They are absolutely insane and surreal. If you have experienced profound derealization and/or depersonalization in your life, you will find yourself washed back into those feelings. (At least, I did.)

“Less Than Zero” could be a vignette from “Glamorama”, an expansion of the mood, with less plot. It’s less strong than Ellis’ later books, and less funny. (In fact, it’s not funny at all.) While I was reading it, I was thinking, “What’s the big deal?” (which is a terrifying thing to find yourself thinking while reading any of his books). Then I checked the publication date and it is 1985.

1985! I was 6 years old! I bet people crapped their pants and made a big stink when this book was published! It probably shocked the hell out of everyone (except the profoundly depersonalized, who maybe nodded to themselves quietly).

It’s always comforting to read Ellis’ books and know that someone else can articulate what it is like to be so very, very alone that you actually feel like an intruder on the planet, an alien. Everything small thing seems strange, and the big things seem small, and he is able to describe the sensation of an anxiety thick enough to drown you.

Here are some excerpts I liked from “Less Than Zero”:

   There’s a large dog at Blair’s feet and I lean down and stroke the dog’s head. Kim comes out of the bathroom, takes a drag off the cigarette Blair was smoking and then throws it on the floor. She turns the stereo back up, some Prince song.
   “Jesus, Clay, you look like you’re on acid or something,” Blair says, lighting another cigarette.
   “I just had dinner with my mother,” I tell her.
   The dog puts the cigarette out with its paw and then eats it.

   When it got really dark the nights would be black and hot and on some nights these weird white clouds would drift slowly through the sky and disappear by dawn. It would also be quiet. It was strange to drive down 110 at one or two in the morning. There wouldn’t be any cars out, and if I stopped by the side of the road and turned the radio off and rolled down the windows, I couldn’t hear anything. Only my own breath, which was all raspy and dry and came in uneven gasps. But I wouldn’t do this for long, because I’d catch a glimpse of my eyes in the rearview mirror, sockets red, scared, and I’d get really frightened for some reason and drive home quickly.

…”Hair looks good,” [Trent] tells Ronnette.
   “Did it myself. I had this dream, see, where I saw the whole world melt. I was standing on La Cienega and from there I could see the whole world and it was melting and it was just so strong and realistic like. And so I thought, Well, if this dream comes true, how can I stop it, you know?”
   I’m nodding my head.
   “How can I change things, you know? So I thought if I, like, pierced my ear or something, like alter my physical image, dye my hair, the world wouldn’t melt. So I dyed my hair and this pink lasts. I like it. It lasts. I don’t think the world is going to melt anymore.”

Moon over Aurora Bridge, 2007 (For sale)

“Falling away from God” and deciding you don’t believe in a religion or the Bible-God anymore is a special kind of experience… It’s like finding out you were the victim of a huge intricate con. It’s a great experience-metaphor for what happened to me later in my twenties, as I started feeling like my parents deliberately tricked me into not being as angry as I should have been at them. Really, I think this is just what happens when you get more experience, grow older, and see things in a different light. You realize that all was not what it appeared to be, and damn it how could you have not seen that, how could you have been so stupid, but oh well, at least you know now. So you try to take comfort in your own self (if you can sense it), and keep on going.

I was thinking that if I wrote as honestly as Kyria Abrahams did in “I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed”, I would offend just about everyone I know. Then I realized that that is not truth– it’s just a fear. It’s just a fear that all the people in the world are ready to kick you out the door if you breathe a word of honesty in their direction– if you tell them something real about yourself. That fear of abandonment governed my actions for a long time, and I am sure it still does to some extent, even if I can’t see it clearly. It’s not something easily gotten rid of.

I have my best friend Jen to thank for kind of weaning me out of that fear in my early twenties, when we were roommates and I had to learn how to have a confrontation over something like the moldy ramen in the kitchen sink and not see it as impending Friendship-Armageddon.

I was just looking at Kyria Abrahams’ website, and found this post with a video of a Jehovah’s Witness girl talking about her religion… it just slays me. Reminds me of some of my relatives, who I used to want to rescue from their family, to just run in and whisk them away, and take them to the safe, secular city– it would be dramatic, like the SWAT team moving in to save hostages from a rapidly deteriorating standoff between terrorists and law enforcement. At some point I realized I couldn’t “save” them, and more than they can Save me. Oh, the irony!

I don’t know– I guess some of my health problems I choose to ignore, because there are only so many preventive measures I can take at one time without getting overwhelmed. I have been ignoring my headaches a lot, and many other things, because I have just figured, “Oh, it’s another symptom of lupus, what can I do? I shall ignore it.” That’s been part of making peace with my immunological problems. You make peace with the worst, but keep hoping and working for the best (when you have the energy).

However, this book, by a prominent neurologist, recommends that I quit drinking coffee (and cut out all caffeine, actually, since it’s a potent migraine trigger). HOLY CRAP!!!

I need to say that again: HOLY CRAP!!!!!!!!!

It’s the like health section of my brain library was just toppled by an earthquake! I don’t want to have to go back in there and sort the books and shelve them all again!

However, yesterday it struck me that one of the funniest things a Seattleite could do is to quit drinking coffee, during the holidays, in the middle of winter. Now it’s so funny I have to do it.

I have quit drinking coffee twice before, so I know it can be done, it just really sucks– and I hate “quitting” things. I went through a period in my life where I put myself on a lot of dietary restrictions for imagined weight problems, so this whole “deprivation” feeling starts getting stirred up, and it just feels ugly.

However, I am 29, not 18 still, and I am a different person now, and it will be okay, and it’s not that big of a deal. (Imagine me rocking back and forth repeatedly while saying these self-soothing things.) But seriously, if it helps me with migraines… well shit, of course that’s worth it.

Unrelated side note: My galanthus (snowdrops) are sprouting out of the ground. TOO EARLY, YOU GUYS. SOMEONE IS GOING TO SET YOU UP THE SNOW AND THEN YOU WILL BE SORRY!

Migraine, 2007

Jen really is my muse. She’s inspired me since I became friends with her in early college. We actually went to high school together, but never talked because we were in very different social circles (and I think also because she was busy dealing with cancer).

Jen is the only one I know who will do crazy things if I come up with an idea– “Hey Jen, lay down in the grass and let me squash a blackberry on your face and it will look like the blackberry killed you! It’ll be awesome!” “Okay!” She’s sort of a conduit for some of the weirdness that I’m unable to express personally. I just realized that she is due much more thanks for this than I have given her.

Anyway– it was fun to put together a book about Jen. There are no words in the book, but there is certainly a story.

I finally got around to reading the copy of Little Brother by Cory Doctorow that I bought when it first came out, in June, I think… and it left me all weepy and inspired.

I guess I should say first that the writing itself is not stellar, the plot being kind of blocky and awkward in some places, but it’s such an interesting, rousing, sad tale that I didn’t really care. I feel like Doctorow proselytized through his characters, all of them taking on the same tone, rather than developing their characters fully and letting them hash things out authentically. But, I imagine that when you have a very clear agenda you would like to communicate, namely, education about constitutional rights and security, it’s probably hard to strike a balance between proselytizing and letting characters speak and act naturally.

The novel is narrated in first person by a high school kid, a sassy hacker boy, who is pretty much exactly how I imagine my husband was in high school. I guess that is what endeared the book to me. It was super cute to read about kids running around being hackers, using hacker language, doing hacker things. It made me wonder what it’s like to be a teenage hacker now. Hell, I’m almost 30. (Ruh roh!) “Don’t trust anyone over 25!”

The novel started to remind me so much of 1984 that I began to be terrified of what was coming– and rightly. It’s kind of like a young adult version of 1984. It’s really horrifying, in a good way, I think– it brings home very contemporary issues in a way that young adults can relate to. For this, my brain forgives him any awkwardnesses in writing. I would give this novel to my kids (if I had any), to any young adult interested in computers, in freedom of speech, in hacking, to anyone asking “WTF is going on in my country?”, and to anyone splooging a bunch of their personal data out onto the internets via Myspace.

I also love the discussion at the end of the book on the hacker mindset, written by Bruce Schneier. He says,

So when you’re wandering through your day, take a moment to look at the security sytems around you. … Pay attention at airport security. (How could you get a weapon onto an airplane?) Watch what the teller does at a bank. (Bank security is designed to prevent tellers from stealing just as much as it is to prevent you from stealing.) … Look at traffic lights and door locks and all the security systems on television and in the movies. Figure out how they work, what threats they protect against and what threats they don’t, how they fail, and how they can be exploited.

Holy shit! He just suggested that children try to figure out how get weapons on airplanes! Arrest him! Oh wait, he’s a well-known security expert. What’s going on here?!

I remember sitting in DFW airport with Richard, inside the security perimeter, at some stupid restaurant, looking at all the very metal eating utensils, the glasses hanging in the bar, thinking about how easy it would be to wrap a glass in a napkin, pocket it, and then quietly crush it on the airplane, using shards of glass as weapons. So easy. What an outrage. We also talked about how much trouble we thought we could get in for even saying something about that, for walking up to a TSA official and pointing out that someone could do it. Certainly we’d be detained, maybe arrested. Such bullshit.

Later Schneier says,

  Trading privacy for security is stupid enough; not getting any actual security in the bargain is even more stupid.
  So close the book and go. The world is full of security systems. Hack one of them.

Yeah! Go kids!! Go get smart and save the world, seriously! We have royally fucked you and we’re very sorry!

No seriously though. I was so happy to read this book. It’s not a jolly lark to read (I cried in some parts!), but I highly recommend it to everyone. Everyone!

Here’s a recent photo of a relevant sign, so you don’t get disappointed that there were no pictures to go with this post:

Warning and ivy, 2008

We Disappear: A Novel

Sometimes it seemed that everything she’d recently done–all her fraudulence, the hoaxes on the mourning families and friends, and now, her capture of Otis–was shameful, monstrous, vile. And I felt equally guilty; I’d allowed it all to happen. For three cold days, as I drove from the hospital to home and back again, I searched for possible solutions and remedies. Nothing, it seemed, could lull the racket out of my head. The only relief was dreaming of worse. Sins more wicked than ours. Somewhere, in some shadowy bedroom of a leaf-strewn town, a father bolts the door to a child’s room, then steps closer to the bed. In a neighbor’s garden lurks a weed with a fumy, blade-petaled flower, its poison choking the red roses. Somewhere a car is crashing; a phone is ringing in the center of night. The spider waits poised in the slipper. The bird swoops headlong into glass it thought was farther air. The strangler envisions a neighborhood of throats. The head finds the noose; the foot kicks the chair.

Hm. When I first read that, I thought it was really cool and dramatic, but now that I’m posting the excerpt here, I’m not that impressed. The writing seems awkward and strangely worded. (What kind of sentence is, “The bird swoops headlong into glass it thought was farther air”?)

I do understand the sentiment though– when we are familiar with detestable things, we can find solace in thinking on things increasingly morose.

I guess that describes my relationship with this book. So look– I came from a seriously fucked up family: mental illness, abuse, drugs, delusions, estrangement, narcissism– it’s all in “We Disappear”, and none of it seems very surprising, probably because the subject matter is already so close to home. But I think if it were a great book, I would feel surprised. I imagine that’s what great books do– they show you the familiar in a surprising or meaningful light.

The following is a tangent: something that always bothered me when I was a Christian was how the bible tells you to dwell on virtuous and pure thoughts:

Philippians 4:8 – Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.

I always wanted to know why I was expected to dwell on pure and virtuous things instead of the truth of my life, which was filled with horrible things? Why would god want me ignore the horror of daily life? Where would I find the inspiration to think about virtue and purity? For a totally lost kid, it was too much to ask, and too confusing.